


A Time For Living

by cpt_winniethepooh



Series: Happy Steve Bingo fills [10]
Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Avengers Family, Avengers Tower, Fluff, M/M, Misconceptions, Mistletoe, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Steve Rogers and the 21st Century, Team as Family, a bit of melancholy in the beginning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-29
Updated: 2019-11-29
Packaged: 2021-02-26 03:15:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,783
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21606661
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cpt_winniethepooh/pseuds/cpt_winniethepooh
Summary: The Avengers had a habit of testing Steve's boundaries. Steve didn't mind it, but minds it even less when he gets Bucky back who also joins the fun.A Happy Steve Bingo fill for the prompt 'mistletoe'.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers, Pepper Potts/Tony Stark
Series: Happy Steve Bingo fills [10]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1139174
Comments: 8
Kudos: 226
Collections: Happy Steve Bingo 2019





	A Time For Living

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Cliff Richard's 'Mistletoe and Wine' because I couldn't get that song out of my head.

It used to be a beloved tradition of the Avengers after the alien invasion, and although many things have changed since then, some perceptions just never quite went away.

See, Steve was new to the 21th century – two weeks in, to be precise, when the Chitauri attacked New York. And those two weeks hadn't been spent by catching up on popular culture, so he missed quite a lot of references, something which Tony pointed out regularly. Not out of malice, Steve had learned through the years, but because he had been just as bad at dealing with his emotions as Steve had.

And even though it stung to be always reminded of the fact that he was of a different world, that he didn't belong, he did not show it. Asking anybody to stop on the grounds that he didn't chose this, that he was just trying to save the world, would've just looked like bragging.

Not that he needed the reminder. Not even the bread or the paper of his sketchbooks had felt the same, let alone the streets and the people around him. And most of the Avengers and the people at SHIELD didn't do it to annoy him or get a good laugh; they just couldn't help drawing attention to how different Steve was.

"What do you mean you've never tried a frappucino?" Darcy exclaimed, for instance. "They are like, the best. You need to try the pumpkin spice one, that is amazing!"

"Hey, you haven't had pineapple on pizza? What a lucky guy," Sam said.

"What I wouldn't give to read this book for the first time again," Pepper sighed.

But he masked his discomfort so well that even those with the best intentions started to see it as kind of a challenge: how far could they go to shake perfect Cap's perfect behavior?

Tony was the best in that, naturally. He and Steve just had a very specific skillset of being able to push each other’s buttons to the breaking point, even without trying, and oh, boy, was Tony trying.

There were the constant movie references, and even when Steve watched some to get the jokes, Tony just switched to new ones instead. There were the increasingly weirder and weirder ethnic foods on the table, and Steve gave all a fair try, and he enjoyed having options other than boiled chicken, but some he just never understood. The amount of chili on top of a rice dish was okay for normal humans, he supposed, but his heightened senses got fired after the first bite.

Nat later told him that Tony had just been messing with him and making up half of the stuff anyway.

Clint made increasingly more and more disturbing references to his disastrous experiences, apparently trying to freak Steve out with how many times he ended up in a dark alley dumpster and how he walked out of the hospital with the broken leg, for instance. It would've been much more impressive if A, Steve hadn't had firsthand knowledge on how apt and competent Clint actually was, and B, Steve hadn't had very similar life experiences himself.

Nat was the sneakiest: she sat and observed, and then ambushed him when he least expected it.

"I learned that from a Chinese assassin," she said, when he complimented one of her throws in the gym. "She was very agile."

"Is she still alive?" Steve teased.

"Oh, yes. Nobody deserves to die with bedroom skills like hers."

She wasn't trying to shock Steve by being vulgar; that fell to other dudes from SHIELD. Instead, she was testing his limits, mostly about sexuality and gender.

"And yet they call you the Black Widow," he said wryly, and could see the fraction of a smile on her face.

"They call me many things," she said lowly, and they laughed.

Nat was also the one that tried to hook him up with the most people, and she had the full support of the team. She, at least, only did it by extremely specific suggestions about coworkers, whereas Tony had tried to set him up on blind dates disguised as ‘work appointments’. Steve had to have a serious talk with him after the fourth one, and the first man, and Tony, naturally, assumed that the gay-thing freaked Steve out and not that it was very inappropriate to lull people into thinking that Cap may be looking for a love interest at their table.

But the team latched onto every opportunity that would get Steve either weirded out, in general, or interested in someone, specific. Valentine days were extremely heated with a lot of pink paper hearts aimed at him, full of info about interested SHIELD employees. Fourth of July wasn't better, because everybody invited him to their party and wished him a happy birthday, a lot of the time with heartfelt presents. Steve always felt awkward eating chocolate when it wasn't even his real birthday, but that was still better than getting lace lingerie that one time, after which he always got Coulson to get him on a mission throughout all of July.

And, of course, there was Christmas. The party would've been okay, even with the horrible sweaters and unbearable music, but when midnight rolled around and the punch began to hit, three different and unfamiliar people tried to kiss Steve after saying only the briefest of ‘hi’-s. Steve hid next to Bruce behind a huge Christmas tree in the corner to avoid further confrontation, and felt all of his nearly one hundred years as he muttered,

"People have no manners these days."

Bruce chuckled. "Yeah, I saw Abigail get you under the mistletoe."

Oh. Steve looked up, and indeed: little green leaves with small red berries hang low from the ceiling everywhere.

"I'll strangle Tony," Steve grumbled.

"Fair, but this one isn't his fault. Or, yeah, it is, but it's not because of you."

Steve followed Bruce's line of sight. In the middle of the crowded and overdecorated room, Tony and Pepper were swaying softly under a bouquet of mistletoe, the whole world nonexistent around them as they exchanged sweet kisses from time to time.

Loneliness surged up in Steve's heart, and he wished he could have had some of Thor's ale, at least.

As the years passed, the team slowly learned that Steve wasn't so easily freaked out. He rose to every test, and as the team leader, he had a certain solemnness about him, but that didn't mean he couldn't enjoy Mongolian food or share stories about miscalculating a jump and ending up in hospital.

His relationship with Tony had its ups and downs, but at the end of the day, they learned to respect and work with each other properly. Sure, there was that Christmas when Tony had the whole ceiling of the common floor covered with mistletoe, so that Steve couldn't escape it, but even Steve had laughed at that.

And when Bucky came back, these stories became a new source of enjoyment for him.

"And then, I swear to god, he jumped up the wall just to prove he could do it," Clint told Bucky with tears in his eyes. "It was the most ridiculous thing I've ever seen!"

"Clint grew up in the circus, so that's saying something," Natasha chimed in.

"It wasn't that bad," Steve protested.

"Oh, how about the time when he jumped out a plane without a parachute?"

Bucky's eyes narrowed and Steve gulped. Some memories were gone, and he was a quieter, more reserved person, but nothing would ever get the protective instinct out of Bucky.

"Aren't the muffins done yet?" Steve asked, and Bucky shot to his feet immediately. Nat smirked knowingly, but the crisis was temporarily averted, so Steve just sighed with relief.

Tony, the most tech-savvy of the lot, took the ‘lets tell Bucky about how stupid Steve had been’ challenge to the next level by queueing up the camera footage from JARVIS and playing that on movie nights.

"That's Carl behind Steve, see, and he will–"

"Ooh, I remember this!" Bruce exclaimed.

"I wish I didn't," Steve muttered gloomily, but when Bucky burst out laughing at how Steve had thrusted his shield at Carl, forgetting how heavy it was, and how Carl almost fell down from the unexpected weight, he couldn't hold back his own smile.

"Oh, how about that time he spent an hour sketching during a briefing, and Coulson framed it later?" Clint asked.

"I only have footage of the finished product," JARVIS said, and brought up the sketch of the Brooklyn Bridge that currently hang above Coulson's desk.

"I remember this," Bucky said softly. "The view from where I used to work?"

"Yeah," Steve laid his head on Bucky's shoulder.

"Aw, sappy old men," Tony said.

"Show me something funny?" Bucky asked him.

"Okay. Steve gets scared by the motion-sensor activated pumpkins on Halloween, watch."

Steve had almost suffered a heart-attack, but hearing Bucky's unbridled joy at seeing him jump three feet into the air would've been worth an actual heart-attack.

"His face under the mistletoe," Clint suggested next, and Steve had to bury his face in Bucky's shoulder when the footage was played.

This, Bucky didn't laugh at. "She kissed you without asking!" he said.

"It's a holiday thing," Tony said, and Bucky rolled his eyes.

"I know about the mistletoe, but I – and I think everybody here – also know about body autonomy and consent, and the lack thereof, hm?"

Uncomfortable silence settled.

"Your therapist would be proud," Nat said.

"It wasn't like that," Steve said. "She apologized profusely. She misunderstood my nodding."

"She still shouldn't have," Bucky sulked.

"O-kay, how about when they had Cap answer some questions while playing with a bunch of kittens?"

 _That_ was the right video to show: Steve never had experience with cats as he was way too allergic before the serum and way too busy after it, and when half a dozen furballs with antennae for tails and high-pitch meows were dropped in his lap, he was thoroughly out of his depth.

Bucky had successfully forgotten about the mistletoe and was wiping the tears from his eyes, he was laughing so hard by the end of the footage.

And when the next Christmas rolled around and Tony threw a party, Steve deliberately stood under the mistletoe.

"Careful," Bucky warned him. "Someone may try to kiss you."

"I may not mind that," Steve said coyly.

"Wouldn't you," Bucky grinned. "And what if that person would be me?"

"I would very much like that," Steve said, and when Bucky did in fact kiss him, he vowed to hand mistletoes from every doorway of their apartment, and then some.

**Author's Note:**

> So this started out as something then went into a different direction. I tried to have Steve finding his place without also finding love/the transformative power of love for once, which was hard for me. I hope you like it!


End file.
